Blood Sisters_ Vampire Stories by Women - Paula Guran Page 0,50

the wind seemed to lift them through the night. They’d found sleeping farmhands, sunk deeply into their dreams, and Bird, always the teacher, had allayed Gilda’s fears. Whatever horror there might be in the act of taking blood was not part of this for them. Bird taught Gilda how to reach inside their thoughts, find the dream that meant the most while taking her share of the blood. In exchange for the blood Gilda learned to leave something of help behind for them and in this way remained part of the process of life.

Later, Gilda heard of those who did not believe in exchange. Murder was as much a part of their hunger as the blood. The fire of fear in the blood of others was addictive to some who became weak with need for the power of killing. Or, even worse, they snared mortals in their life of blood without seeking permission. The eyes of these killers glistened with the same malevolence she’d seen in the eyes of overseers on the plantation when she was a girl. The thud of their boot on the flesh of a slave lit an evil light inside them. Gilda avoided those with such eyes. To have escaped slavery only to take on the mantle of the slaveholders would have shamed Gilda and her mentor, Bird, more than either would have been able to bear. Instead, she thrived on the worlds of imagination that she shared with others.

We take blood, not life. Leave something in exchange. The words of that lesson pulsed through Gilda with the blood. In the exchange, it was usually easy to provide an answer to the simple needs she discovered as she took her share of the blood. In one situation a lonely woman needed to find the courage to speak aloud in order to find companionship; in another a frightened thief required only the slightest encouragement to seek another profession. Gilda enjoyed the sense of completion when she drew back and saw the understanding on their faces, even in sleep.

Gilda had lived this way for more than eighty years—traveling the country, seeking the company of mortals, leaving small seeds among those whose blood she shared. But recently, with each new town, Gilda had begun to lose her connection with mortals. She had little confidence in her ability to live in such close proximity with them and maintain her equilibrium. In the last town, she’d settled comfortably, remote enough from neighbors to avoid suspicion. Yet she’d enjoyed the life of the small black community in Missouri and been inspired by them. Their scrubbed-clean church, the farmers who distributed food from their land to people who were hungry, the women who nursed any who needed it. The burden of insults and deprivation they faced each day was only a small part of what they shared. Gilda had found herself deeply enmeshed with someone whose life was so rooted in that town, it was clear she was meant for the age in which she lived. The companionship had renewed Gilda in ways that were as important as the blood. Despite the temptation to bring someone into her life, Gilda saw that to disrupt another’s would have been disaster. Again, Bird’s lessons had helped her find her way through the confusion of power and desire.

Gilda had moved on, leaving her cherished companion behind, finding her way onto the road alone once more. In her isolation, she’d begun to feel the weight of her years.

A sound drew her back to the moment; footsteps were approaching her quickly from behind. This was a neighborhood in which the men who worked on the railroads and in the meatpacking plants often drank hard and followed their impulses. Her caution hardened into defense when she saw two white men barreling toward her. Gilda had recently read in one of the newspapers that the Ku Klux Klan was having a large resurgence across the country and these two exuded that same kind of agitation. The larger man, dark curly hair falling in his eyes, threw his arms out to envelop her in an embrace; the other was close behind. Gilda stepped aside quickly and left him empty-handed and bewildered. She realized that both were drunk, but her evasion seemed to anger the curly-haired one. The short man, more inebriated than his companion, fell to his knees laughing at the sight of his off-balance friend.

“Come on, darlin’. A little kiss, that’s what we want,” he said from his kneeling position